“Inklings and Arthur Series Introduction” by David Llewellyn Dodds

Posted on January 10, 2018 by Brenton Dickieson

It was as an ‘Arthurian’ that I first consciously encountered Charles Williams, with that adjective applying to both him and me. (I, ever since I was given Emma Gelders Sterne and Barbara Lindsay’s retelling, King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table,  as a little fellow, however hair-raising were Gustaf Tenggren’s depictions of Lancelot’s sword splitting Meliagrance’s helmeted head in half and the giant Taulurd’s severed arm in mid-air as Sir Tor hewed it off.)  It was only later that I realized I had already happily encountered him, enriching Dorothy Sayers’ notes in her translation of Dante’s Comedy.

However, it was not until I thought to ‘work on him’ seriously that I came to learn how many of Williams’ Arthurian writings were still unpublished. In this adventure of reading I ended up as a textual editor. But I have also been in awe of that other kind of editor – of a thematic collection of papers – ever since I saw Mark Ormrod working on England in the Fourteenth Century when we were both teaching at Harlaxton College. If working on a single author’s unknown works has its rewards, it takes a certain kind of skill and editorial eye to bring all those perspectives together into a single volume.

Sørina Higgins has clearly done a particularly awesome piece of work in editing The Inklings and King Arthur: J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, C.S. Lewis, & Owen Barfield on the Matter of Britain. On a scale much less grand, we have aimed to do something similar here with the ‘Inklings and Arthur’ series this winter. The series will highlight a dozen posts from leading and emerging scholars from the fields of medieval and renaissance literature, Arthurian studies, and Inklings studies–as well as poets, writers, artists, and students.

I am honoured to serve as guest editor of this little series of online works to help celebrate its appearance – and relieved to think I have our seasoned host to pilot me safely through any shoals or reefs which may appear en route. While it is my particular delight to be the first to see the ferment of our contributors’ ideas and savour the results, I am happy to think you will be joining me in their enjoyment in the weeks ahead. Watch for an Inklings and Arthur post each Wednesday, and feel free to join in the conversation.

David Llewellyn Dodds has edited the Charles Williams and John Masefield 
volumes of Boydell & Brewer’s Arthurian Poets series, the first while 
President of the Oxford C.S. Lewis Society, living at and looking after 
The Kilns. His most recent publication is “‘Tolkien’s Narnia’?: Lit., 
Lang., Saints, Tinfang, and a Mythology – or two – for Christmas”, in 
Tolkien Among Scholars (Lembas Extra 2016). He is currently editing 
Charles Williams’s Arthurian Commonplace Book, and an early cycle of 
Arthurian poetry, The Advent of Galahad,  for publication (with 
tortoise-like slowness, if not steadiness).

Posted in Inklings and Arthur | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 12 Comments

2017: A Year of Reading

Posted on January 8, 2018 by Brenton Dickieson

“The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes. Unless a particular man made New Year resolutions, he would make no resolutions. Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective.” ~ G.K. Chesterton (thanks to Book Oblivion for the quote)

As a PhD student it is my “job” to read. And though I struggled with writing except in strong spurts in 2017, reading is the area where I have been the most successful and consistent. I had a few goals for 2017:

  • Reduce my reading to 100 books, but read longer books (averaging 320 pages/book)
  • 125 articles, shorts stories, essays, or other short pieces (not in collections)
  • A 1:3 female:male ratio of authors
  • Read C.S. Lewis’ essays in the winter, his poetry in the summer, and his fiction in the fall
  • Increase the number of classes/lecture series to 10
  • Increase my Canadian literature content
  • Read one theological book a month
  • Read one literary theory or writing text a week for my Research Methods class in the fall

My goals this year were really about:

  • thickening up my reading and focussing it to match my thesis needs
  • intentionally building up my CanLit knowledge (with the goal of presenting at a conference in 2018)
  • reading for course prep (which overlaps with my PhD program)

80% of my books fit into one of those categories, and another 10% of my books and all the lectures were designed for increasing skills or devotional reading.

So, how did I do?

With due respect to the creepy encouragement from Goodreads–how would they know what I’m good at?–I muffed my first goal. For some reason, I put some omnibus editions in Goodreads, so it looks like 117 books at 36,000 words. When tracking individual books on my excel sheet (below), it was actually 127 books. In either case, the word length is the same, meaning I didn’t read longer books in 2017. This shows that I was a little soft on my thesis reading and filled it out with more fiction than normal. It also attests to how thin C.S. Lewis’ books are–the main character in my PhD dissertation. Lewis’ brevity is legendary, one of the reasons I would like to write essays like he does. Leaving out his journals and letters, Lewis averaged 221.8 pages per book. In 2017 I read 21 Lewis books, which will soften these averages considerably.

I met my learning goals this year, and except for being soft on Lewis’ poetry, I met my Lewis goals (including struggling with Charles Williams). I read 14 books by Canadian fiction writers. In 2018 I want to take that forward, reading a couple of more of Margaret Atwood, more of Lucy Maud Montgomery, and whatever I can fit in of Guy Gavriel Kay. And I fell just short of my 1:3 female:male ratio (though by the goodreads stats I came pretty close). 22% of the books I read were written by women. As a scholar of primarily male figures, that’s to be expected, but I am intent on broadening my experience. The ratio may shift in late 2018 or early 2019 as I come to a question about gender in my thesis.

stats-9

Over the years of reading, my monthly averages have flattened out. As always, there is a drop in the early fall–I find the fall semester really difficult to get started. What has been consistent in all three previous years is the strength of my summer reading; 2017 was just below average, with a much stronger spring and late fall. Perhaps this might be a bit bent as my summer was taken up by longer books like The Name of the Wind, The Brothers Karamazov, and IT. 

 

 

 

Though I don’t tend to count blogs or most internet articles, books are not all of my reading. In 2017, I dropped pretty dramatically in my reading of articles as I found myself reading primary source material more than usual in research. I exceeded the goal with the number of lectures I listened to, going through 13 series in total.  In the chart below, gold is books, purple is articles, and green includes lecture series and classes.

My charts have better detail, but honestly, the Goodreads infographic is just so much nicer (see the entire infographic here).

If my reading had themes this past year, it was these:

  • C.S. Lewis and books about him (21 and 11 books respectively); the book above where I was the only reader is the Revised Psalter, which Lewis helped edit
  • Books by and about the Inklings (10 books), including a focus on Tolkien
  • CanLit books (14), including a turn to L.M. Montgomery
  • Theological works (24 books)
  • SF and Fantasy books, other than Inklings (24 books), including some classic SF, some Stephen King, and my ongoing reading of Discworld
  • Literary theory, literary criticism, and literary history (17 books and a couple of dozen articles), mostly in the fall, but I try to read a literary history book ever season

This coming year, my reading will be determined by season:

  • Winter: Because I am precepting a course called Literature, Film, and Technoculture with Signum University, my winter and part of the spring will be dominated by SciFi (I think my SHANWAR read is SF, but I’m not sure yet)
  • Spring: I will be finishing up the SciFi class reading and focussing on two areas for the rest of the spring: L.M. Montgomery’s work from 1908-1917, and C.S. Lewis’ teenage work (1914-1919)
  • Summer: The summer is all about C.S. Lewis, especially secondary material; my reading will lighten as I have 6 weeks of dedicated writing time
  • Fall: Continues the C.S. Lewis work with a supplement in theology; I will probably also reread Harry Potter, as I do every other autumn

And I will be going slowly through the catalogues that I love: Tolkien, Discworld, and a couple of the lists from this blog.

3

The Goodreads app is kind of limited, though you can check out my 2017 infographic. They have a thousand possibilities for creating infographics, yet they can’t figure out how to give us that power. Until then, I’ll stick with the classic excel sheet list. I wish I was infographically-inclined, but I do like lists! Here is my list of reading form 2017. “CSL” below means “C.S. Lewis.” I’ve linked some of the blogs that connect with the things I’ve read. Are any of these books or papers yours? If so, feel free to link my list. If you have your own year-end list or best-of blog, make sure you link it in the comments.

# Date Book or Short Piece
January
1 Jan 01 Kenneth E. Bailey, “Informal Controlled Oral Tradition and the Synoptic Gospels” (1995)
2 Jan 01 Courtney Petrucci, “Abolishing Man in Other Worlds: Breaking and Recovering the Chain of Being in C.S. Lewis’s Ransom Cycle” (2016)
3 Jan 01 Terry Pratchett, Jingo (1997)
4 Jan 01 J.K. Rowling, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2003)
5 Jan 02 David C. Downing and Bruce R. Johnson, “C.S. Lewis’s Unfinished ‘Easley Fragment’ and his Unfinished Journey” (1928; 2011)
6 Jan 06 J.K. Rowling, The Tales of Beedle the Bard (2003)
7 Jan 08 CSL, God in the Dock (1966)
8 Jan 08 Arend Smilde, “A History of C. S. Lewis’s Collected Shorter Writings” (2012; 2015)
9 Jan 10 CSL, The Weight of Glory (1980)
10 Jan 12 CSL, Foreword to Joy Davidman, Smoke on the Mountain (1955)
11 Jan 14 CSL, Christian Reflections (1967)
12 Jan 17 CSL, Present Concerns (1986)
13 Jan 17 CSL, “Blimpophobia” (1944)
14 Jan 17 J.R.R. Tolkien, The Father Christmas Letters (1920s-30s; 1976)
15 Jan 18 CSL, Of This and Other Worlds (1982)
16 Jan 20 Jeff McInnis, In and Out of the Moon (2015)
17 Jan 23 CSL, Preface to George MacDonald: An Anthology (1946)
18 Jan 23 CSL, The Abolition of Man (1943)
19 Jan 23 Katharine MacDonald, “Youth Retention and Repatriation in PEI” (2016)
20 Jan 25 J.R.R. Tolkien, Beowulf: A Translation (1920-6; 2014)
21 Jan 26 Mary Anne Phemister & Andrew Lazo, Mere Christians (2009)
22 Jan 26 Emily Strand, “Rogue One and the Paschal Mystery” (2016)
23 Jan 26 Tom Shippey, “J.R.R. Tolkien’s Beowulf” (2017)
24 Jan 26 J.R. Lucas, “Restoration of Man” (1992)
25 Jan 27 W.W. Robson, “C.S. Lewis” (1966)
26 Jan 29 CSL, “A Slip of the Tongue” (1956; 1963)
27 Jan 29 CSL, Reflections on the Psalms (1958)
28 Jan 30 J.R.R. Tolkien and Verlyn Flieger (ed.), The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun (1930; 2016)
29 Jan 31 Walter Hooper, ed, introduction and editorial note of They Stand Together: The Letters of C.S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves (1979)
30 Jan 31 Clyde S. Kilby, Letters to an American Lady (1969)
31 Jan 31 CSL, Dymer (1925; 1950 preface)
February
32 Feb 01 Bruce Hindmarsh, “The Roots of Evangelical Spirituality” (2007)
33 Feb 01 CSL, “Christian Reunion” (1944)
34 Feb 03 CSL, The World’s Last Night and Other Essays (1960)
35 Feb 04 J.R.R. Tolkien, Tales from the Perilous Realm (1992)
36 Feb 05 N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church (2007)
37 Feb 06 J.R.R. Tolkien and Verlyn Flieger (ed.), The Story of Kullervo (1914; 2015)
38 Feb 07 David Baggett, Jerry L. Walls, Gary Habermas, et al, C.S. Lewis as Philosopher: Truth, Goodness and Beauty (2008)
39 Feb 10 Mark Noll, “Opening a Wardrobe” (1986)
40 Feb 10 Jean L.S. Patrick, ed., A Christian for All Christians: Essays in Honor of C.S. Lewis (1990)
41 Feb 14 Matthew Lee, “To Reign in Hell or to Serve in Heaven: C.S. Lewis on the Problem of Hell and Enjoyment of the Good” (2008)
42 Feb 16 J.R.R. Tolkien, “The Lay of Aotrou & Itroun” (1930)
43 Feb 16 Verlyn Flieger, “Tolkien Dark: Kullervo, Aotrou and Itroun” (2016)
44 Feb 18 J.I. Packer, “Still Surprised by Lewis” (1998)
45 Feb 21 Kenneth C. Harper, “C.S. Lewis: A Survey of Recent Scholarship” (1989)
46 Feb 21 Terry Pratchett, The Last Continent (1998)
47 Feb 22 CSL, “Religion Without Dogma?” (1946)
48 Feb 25 Walter Hooper, Preface to Christian Reunion and Other Essays (1990)
49 Feb 25 H. Rider Haggard, King’s Solomon’s Mines (1885)
50 Feb 27 John McWhorter, Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold History of English (2008)
51 Feb 28 Bruce R. Johnson, “Answers that Belonged to Life: C. S. Lewis and the Origins of the Royal Air Force Chaplains’ School, Cambridge” (2012)
52 Feb 28 Edumnd Cooper and Roger Lancelyn Green, Double Phoenix (1971)
53 Feb 28 Harry Lee Poe, “C.S. Lewis Was a Secret Government Agent” (2015)
54 Feb 28 Suzanne Bray, “‘The Exact Programme a Particular Country Wishes to Have’: C.S. Lewis’ Literary Broadcast for Iceland” (2016)
55 Feb 28 Gregory Anderson, “Lost Letters of Lewis at the Lambeth Palace Library” (2016)
56 Feb 28 John G. West “Darwin in the Dock” (2012)
March
58 Mar 01 William Law, A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life (1728)
59 Mar 02 Phyllis A. Tickle, The Great Emergence: How Christianity is Changing and Why (2008)
60 Mar 05 Neil Gaiman, Norse Mythology (2017)
61 Mar 11 William Paul Young, The Shack (2008)
62 Mar 12 Orson Scott Card & Christopher Yost, Ender’s Game: The Graphic Novel (2010)
63 Mar 14 Robert Lacey, The Year 1000: What Life Was Like at the Turn of the First Millennium, An Englishman’s World (1998)
64 Mar 15 Dallas Willard, Renovations of the Heart (2002)
65 Mar 20 Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale (1986)
66 Mar 20 Larry Keeley, Kyla Fullwinder, “Design Thinking” (2016)
67 Mar 20 Margaret Atwood, “What ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ Means in the Age of Trump” (2017)
68 Mar 22 Paul Tillich, The Courage to Be (1952)
69 Mar 22 Timothy Smith, “Whitfield, Wesley, and Evangelical Social Reform” (1987)
70 Mar 26 Stephen King, The Stand (1978)
71 Mar 27 Charles Williams, “What the Cross Means to Me” (1943)
72 Mar 28 G.K. Chesterton, The Man Who Knew Too Much (1922)
73 Mar 30 Roger E. Olson, How to be Evangelical without Being Conservative (2008)
April
74 Apr 01 Michael R. Phillips, The Garden at the Edge of Beyond (1998)
75 Apr 05 Terry Pratchett, Carpe Jugulum (1998)
76 Apr 06 J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion (1977)
77 Apr 07 Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles (1949)
78 Apr 10 Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake (2003)
79 Apr 13 Monika B. Hilder, Surprised by the Feminine: A Rereading of C. S. Lewis’s and Gender (2013)
80 Apr 13 Jean Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion: Book III (1559)
81 Apr 18 Boethius, The Consolations of Philosophy (524)
82 Apr 19 Margaret Atwood, The Year of the Flood (2009)
83 Apr 20 Mark Sampson, Sad Peninsula (2014)
84 Apr 29 Melvyn Bragg, The Adventure of English: The Biography of a Language (2003)
May
85 May 01 G.K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday (1908)
86 May 03 L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables (1908)
87 May 05 Brian Paulsen, The River (1992)
88 May 07 J.K. Rowling, Jack Thorne, John Tiffany, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (2016)
89 May 08 J.R.R. Tolkien, The Legend of Sigurd & Gudrún (1920s-30s; 2009)
90 May 10 Tom Shippey, Review of The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, by J.R.R. Tolkien, ed. Christopher Tolkien (2010)
91 May 10 Joe Christopher, Review of Gender Dance by Monika Hilder (2014)
92 May 10 Laura Lee Smith, Review of Surprised by the Feminine by Monika Hilder (2016)
93 May 10 Charles Huttar, Review of Monika Hilder Trilogy (2016)
94 May 10 Sigrid Undset, Catherine of Siena (1951)
95 May 11 Michael S. Jeffress & William J. Brown, “Freedom of Choice in The Great Divorce: C.S. Lewis’ Rhetorical Vision of the Afterlife” (2017)
96 May 15 William Morris, News from Nowhere (1890)
97 May 15 Carl Edlund Anderson “The Legends of Sigurd and Gudrún” (2017)
98 May 16 Jean Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion: Book IV and 100 Aphorisms (1559)
99 May 19 CSL, T.S. Eliot et al., The Revised Psalter (1959-64)
100 May 19 Walter Hooper, “Reflections on the Psalms” in C.S. Lewis: A Companion and Guide (1996)
101 May 19 Margaret Atwood, MaddAddam (2013)
102 May 24 George M. Marsden, A Short Life of Jonathan Edwards (2008)
103 May 24 Travis Buchanan, “An Unwelcome Transposition: Review Essay of Paul H. Brazier’s C.S. Lewis: Revelation and the Christ” (2016)
104 May 24 Dabney. “A Letter from C.S. Lewis” (2016)
105 May 26 N.T. Wright, The Lord and His Prayer (1996)
106 May 29 Jason Fisher, “Little Known Lewis Letters” (2017)
107 May 29 Francis Warner, “Lewis’ Involvement in the Revision of the Psalter” (2011)
108 May 30 Terry Pratchett, The Fifth Elephant (1997)
109 May 30 Terry Pratchett, “The Sea and Little Fishes” (1998)
June
110 Jun 03 Joseph Laconte, A Hobbit, A Wardrobe, and a Great War (2015)
111 Jun 06 Dante, The Divine Comedy (1308-1320)
112 Jun 07 James M. Houston, “The Prayer Life of CSL” (1989)
113 Jun 10 Arthur G. Holder, The Blackwell Companion to Christian Spirituality (2005)
114 Jun 13 J. Gresham Machen, Christianity & Liberalism (1922)
115 Jun 13 Ron Dart, “CSL and Bede Griffiths” (2017)
116 Jun 14 Brenton D.G. Dickieson, “Mixed Metaphors and Hyperlinked Worlds: A Study of Intertextuality in CSL’s Ransom Cycle” (2015)
117 Jun 14 Suzanne Bray, “’Any Chalice of Consecrated Wine’: The Significance of the Holy Grail in Charles Williams’s War in Heaven” (2017)
118 Jun 16 Marsha Daigle-Williamson, Reflecting the Eternal: Dante’s Divine Comedy in the Novels of CSL (2015)
119 Jun 16 Samuel Johnson, Rasselas (1759)
120 Jun 18 Mark Sampson, The Slip (2017)
121 Jun 26 John Lawlor, C.S. Lewis: Memories and Reflections (1998)
122 Jun 27 John Foxe, Foxe’s Book of Martyrs (1563)
July
123 Jul 01 John Warwick Montgomery, “Contemporary Religious Thoughts” (1970)
124 Jul 01 Terry Pratchett, The Truth (2000)
125 Jul 08 Sinclair B. Ferguson, The Whole Christ: Legalism, Antinomianism, and Gospel Assurance—Why the Marrow Controversy Still Matters (2016)
126 Jul 17 L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Avonlea (1909)
127 Jul 19 L.M. Montgomery, Anne of the Island (1915)
128 Jul 20 Niall Ferguson, The War of the World: History’s Age of Hatred (2006)
129 Jul 23 Charles Williams, Shadows of Ecstasy (1930)
130 Jul 27 CSL, selections from Letters I (1930)
131 Jul 27 David L. Neuhouser, “Crossing the ‘Great Frontier'” (2016)
132 Jul 27 Dale Nelson, “Fantasy and Science Fiction: The C.S. Lewis Issues” (2017)
133 Jul 28 L.M. Montgomery, Anne’s House of Dreams (1917)
134 Jul 29 Eugene Peterson, “Jesus and Prayer” (c. 1996)
135 Jul 30 L.M. Montgomery, Chronicles of Avonlea (1912)
135 Jul 31 Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind (2008)
August
137 Aug 01 Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brother’s Karamazov (1879)
138 Aug 03 David Teems, Tyndale: The Man Who Gave God an English Voice (2012)
139 Aug 08 Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping (1980)
140 Aug 09 CSL, “Philia” (1958)
141 Aug 12 Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time (2001)
142 Aug 13 Jonathan Culler, Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction (1997)
143 Aug 14 Terry Pratchett, The Last Hero (2001)
144 Aug 18 Harold Bloom, How to Read and Why (2000)
145 Aug 21 Oscar Wilde, “The Decay of Lying: An Observation” (1891)
146 Aug 24 Gary Thorne, “Baptized but not Sanctified: George MacDonald and the Fantastic Baptism of the Imagination of C.S. Lewis” (2015)
147 Aug 24 David C. Downing on Lewis & Phantastes (1992, 2002, 2005)
148 Aug 24 George MacDonald, “The Fantastic Imagination” (1895)
149 Aug 24 Claire Connors, Literary Theory: A Beginner’s Guide (2010)
150 Aug 24 Owen Barfield, Christopher Mitchell (ed), Amy Vail (trans) Jane Hipolito (ed), “Death” (1930; 2008)
151 Aug 25 CSL, Spirits in Bondage (1919)
152 Aug 29 A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh (1926)
153 Aug 30 George MacDonald, “The Fantastic Imagination” (1895)
September
154 Sep 04 Signum Faculty, Research Methods (2017)
155 Sep 05 Jorge Luis Borges, Călin-Andrei Mihăilescu (Editor), This Craft of Verse (1976; 2002)
156 Sep 13 Stephen King, IT (1986)
157 Sep 17 John Stott, The Cross of Christ (1986)
158 Sep 18 Lois More Overbeck, “Researching Literary Manuscripts: A Scholar’s Perspective” (1993)
159 Sep 18 Jorge Luis Borges, “The Library of Babel” (1940)
160 Sep 21 Michel Foucault, “What is an Author?” (1969)
161 Sep 24 Frederick Buechner, The Sacred Journey (1982)
162 Sep 25 Percy Bysshe Shelley, “A Defence of Poetry” (1821)
163 Sep 25 Roland Barthes, Mythologies (1957; 2013)
164 Sep 25 Philip Sidney, “An Apologie for Poetrie” (1593)
165 Sep 28 Thérèse of Lisieux, The Story of a Soul (1895-7)
166 Sep 30 Stephen King, Gunslinger (The Dark Tower I; 1982)
167 Sep 30 Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality: Vol 1 (1976)
October
168 Oct 05 Peters Singer, Marx: A Very Short Introduction (2001)
169 Oct 05 T.S. Eliot, “The Wasteland” (1922)
170 Oct 07 W.K. Wimsatt, Jr. and Monroe C. Beardsley, “The Intentional Fallacy” (1954)
171 Oct 07 John Keats, “Ode on a Grecian Urn” (1819)
172 Oct 09 Charles Taylor, “History, Secularity, and the Nova Effect” (2001)
173 Oct 09 Frederick C. Crewes, The Pooh Perplex (1963)
174 Oct 10 Cleanth Brooks, selection from “The Well Wrought Urn” (1947)
175 Oct 11 Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land (1961)
176 Oct 12 Catherine Belsey, Poststructuralism: A Very Short Introduction (2002)
177 Oct 20 A.A. Milne, The Collected Stories of Winnie-the-Pooh (2006)
178 Oct 23 Virginia Woolf, Jacob’s Room (1921)
179 Oct 25 Bill Goldstein, The World Broke in Two: Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot, D.H. Lawrence, E.M. Forster and the Year That Changed Literature (2017)
180 Oct 27 Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own (1929)
181 Oct 30 Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory (1983)
182 Oct 30 Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own (1929)
183 Oct 31 Frederick C. Crewes, The Postmodern Pooh (2001)
November
184 Nov 01 Alan Jacobs, The Book of Common Prayer: A Biography (2013)
185 Nov 03 Paul Fry, “Eng 300: Introduction to the Theory of Literature” class at Yale University (2007)
186 Nov 03 Leonard Neidorf, “R.D. Fulk and the Progress of Philology” (2016)
187 Nov 03 Tom Shippey, “Fighting the Long Defeat: Philology in Tolkien’s Life and Fiction” (2007)
188 Nov 04 Calvert Watkins, “What is Philology?” (1990)
189 Nov 04 Hans Henrich Hock, Introduction to Principles of Historical Linguistics (1991)
190 Nov 06 Signum Faculty, Research Methods (2017)
191 Nov 07 Henry Jenkins, III, “Star Trek Rerun, Reread, Rewritten: Fan Writing as Textual Poaching” (1986)
192 Nov 08 Nola Hopkinson, Brown Girl in the Ring (1998)
193 Nov 09 David C. Downing, The Most Reluctant Convert: C. S. Lewis’s Journey to Faith (2002)
194 Nov 11 J.R.R. Tolkien, “On Fairy-stories” (1947)
195 Nov 11 C.S. Lewis, “On the Reading of Old Books” (1943)
196 Nov 11 Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, “‘Something Fearful’: Medievalist Scholars on the Religious Turn” (2010)
197 Nov 11 Stanley Fish, “One University Under God?” (2005)
198 Nov 11 C.S. Lewis, “On Stories” (1947)
199 Nov 12 CSL, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (1949)
200 Nov 13 Art Lindsley and Chris Mitchell, “Narnia & C.S. Lewis: Imagination, Reason, and You” (2006)
201 Nov 13 CSL, The Pilgrim’s Regress (1932)
202 Nov 13 CSL, “Religion and Science” (1945)
203 Nov 13 CSL, “Work and Prayer” (1945)
204 Nov 13 Charles Williams, “The English Poetic Mind” (1932)
205 Nov 20 David J. Peterson, The Art of Language Invention: From Horse-Lords to Dark Elves, the Words Behind World-Building (2015)
206 Nov 20 CSL, Prince Caspian (1950)
207 Nov 22 George Sayer, Jack: A Life of C.S. Lewis (1988)
208 Nov 24 Charles Williams, The Figure of Beatrice (1942)
209 Nov 27 Eric S. Rabkin, “Science Fiction: The Literature of Technological Imagination” (1998)
210 Nov 27 CSL, “Meditation in a Toolshed” (1945)
211 Nov 27 CSL, Surprised by Joy (1954)
212 Nov 28 CSL, Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1950)
December
213 Dec 04 Alexander Pope, “Eloisa to Abelard” (1717)
214 Dec 05 CSL, The Silver Chair (1951)
215 Dec 06 CSL, The Horse and His Boy (1953)
216 Dec 08 CSL, The Magician’s Nephew (1953)
217 Dec 12 CSL, “Meditation in a Toolshed” (1945)
218 Dec 12 CSL, The Last Battle (1953)
219 Dec 12 Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (1798)
220 Dec 13 CSL, The Great Divorce (1944-45)
221 Dec 15 Stephanie Derrick, “Christmas and Cricket: Rediscovering Two Lost C. S. Lewis Articles After 70 Years” (2017)
222 Dec 15 CSL, Out of the Silent Planet (1937)
223 Dec 18 CSL, The Screwtape Letters with “Screwtape Proposes a Toast” (1941)
224 Dec 20 CSL, Perelandra (1943)
225 Dec 21 CSL, selections on David Lindsay from OHEL (1954)
226 Dec 22 CSL?, “Cricketer’s Progress” (1946)
227 Dec 22 CSL, “A Christmas Sermon for Pagans” (1946)
228 Dec 26 CSL, That Hideous Strength (1945)
229 Dec 27 Rob Gosselin, “Tolkien’s sub-creative vision: Exploring the broad applicability in Tolkien’s concept of sub-creation” (2017)
230 Dec 27 J.R.R. Tolkien, “Leaf by Niggle” (1945)
231 Dec 31 Frederick Buechner, The Book of Bebb (1979)
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King Arthur Has Returned: TOC and Blurbs

Posted on January 6, 2018 by Brenton Dickieson

The book is out! Watch for our Inklings & Arthur series starting in mid-January.

Posted in Reflections | Leave a comment

A Brace of Tolkien Posts for his 126th Birthday #TolkienBirthdayToast

Posted on January 3, 2018 by Brenton Dickieson

To celebrate Tolkien’s twelfthty-sixth birthday on 3 January 2017, the Tolkien Society is once again raising a toast to the Professor. After Bilbo left the Shire on his eleventy-first birthday in The Lord of the Rings, Frodo toasted his uncle’s birthday each year. Tolkien fans continue the tradition for the maker of Middle-earth on this day. J.R.R. Tolkien was born in South Africa on 3 January 1892, making this (if he had Hobbit longevity), his 126th. The Tolkien Society invites you to celebrate the birthday by raising a glass at 9pm your local time, simply toasting “The Professor!”

If you go to the Tolkien Society site, there are a number of Tolkien gatherings listed for today. You can also use the Twitter hashtag, #TolkienBirthdayToast for a little social media cheer.

In honour of Tolkien’s birthday, I decided to update the catalogue of Tolkien posts featured here on A Pilgrim in Narnia. There were a dozen new Tolkien related posts in 2017 as I continued to work through the Letters, reread the Trilogy, read The Silmarillion, and enjoy a lot of the pre-Middle-earth material and old legends. I hope you enjoy the great selection of guest bloggers and feature posts, filling out your Tolkien reading and inspiring you to widen and deepen your Tolkienaphilia.

Frodo, Sam and Gollum in IthilienTolkien’s Ideas

Tolkien’s work is rich with reflection on the world around us. In posts like “Let Folly Be Our Cloak: Power in the Lord of the Rings” and “Affirming Creation in LOTR,” I explore themes related to ideas that are central to Tolkien’s beliefs. The latter idea, creation and good things green, is covered also with Samwise Gamgee here and with Radagast the Brown here. One that resonates long after reading is the theme of Providence, which I explore in “Accidental Riddles in the Invisible Dark.”

One surprising connection was “Simone de Beauvoir and the Keyspring of the Lord of the Rings“–a pairing that many would find unusual and includes some great old footage. Guest blogger Trish Lambert rounded out the discussion with “Friendship Over Family in Lord of the The Rings.” Author Tim Willard talks about “Eucatastrophe: J.R.R Tolkien & C.S. Lewis’s Magic Formula for Hope.” And you can follow Stephen Winter’s LOTR thought project here.

Perhaps Tolkien’s most central contribution beyond the storied world is his idea of subcreation in the poem, “Mythopoeia” and in other works like the essay, “On Fairy-stories” and the allegorical short story, “Leaf by Niggle.” I have been reading a lot about this concept–partly because of students working on the idea–and appreicated poet-philosopher Malcolm Guite’s take on it here.

My most important contribution, I think, is my Theology on Tap talk, called “A Hobbit’s Theology.” It is one of the ideas I am struggling with most specifically in my academic work. And one of the more popular posts this year was a very personal one, “Battling a Mountain of Neglect with J.R.R. Tolkien.” Though I am still not sure if I should have written that post, it has connected with readers.

Tolkien as Writer

lord of the rings tolkien folioI remain fascinated by Tolkien’s development as an author, and spent some time of late exploring the theme. The most popular of pieces I wrote was the coyly titled, “The Shocking Reason Tolkien Finished The Lord of the Rings.” The reason is, of course, not all that shocking, but could be helpful for the subcreators amongst us. Two more substantial posts on the topic are “12 Reasons not to Write Lord of the Rings, or an Ode Against the Muses” and “The Stories before the Hobbit: Tolkien Intertextuality, or the Sources behind his Diamond Waistcoat.”

C.S. Lewis took an interest as well in Tolkien’s formation (see “Book Reviews” below). You can read more about it in Diana Pavlac Glyer’s Bandersnatch, and in this blog post, “‘So Multifarious and So True’: The C.S. Lewis Blurb for the Fellowship of the Ring.” Lewis’ support for Tolkien did not go unrewarded. Besides the great joy of Tolkien’s work, there was a time when Tolkien interceded a time or two on Lewis’ behalf. Friendship goes both ways. Tolkien historian John Garth takes some time to explore this literary friendship further in his detailed explanation of “When Tolkien reinvented Atlantis and Lewis went to Mars.”

The Tolkien Letter Series

Tolkien’s letters remain a rich resource for researchers that is available to everyday readers–and usually available used for a pretty cheap price. In these letters I discovered the tidbits on writing above, and notes like “The Tolkien Letters that Changed C.S. Lewis’ Life.” But it goes much deeper. In “The Tolkien Letter that Every Lover of Middle-Earth Must Read,” I include much of a draft that Tolkien wrote to a Mrs. Mitchison that fills in much of the background to Middle-earth. I also took the time to put Tolkien’s great “I am in fact a Hobbit (in all but size)” quotation in context.

The letters afforded me some time to think about some other ideas. In a longer popular post that any conlanger will know is poorly named–“Why Tolkien Thought Fake Languages Fail“–I discussed Tolkien’s own constructed language program and surmised with the Professor that conlangs fail when the lack a mythic element. I think I am mostly correct and the essay is quite fun, even if I am missing some key elements.

Finally, a little fun with the post, “When Sam Gamgee Wrote to J.R.R. Tolkien.” As you might guess, it is about a real-life Sam Gamgee who sends a note to the maker of Middle-earth. And, of course, when the season of advent returns, check out the Father Christmas Letters.

The Silmarillion Project

This is a new feature for me, partly because 2017 was the year I completed The Silmarillion in its entirety in a single reading (rather than the higgledy-piggledy approach of cherry-picking stories and languishing in the mythic portions, as I am wont to do). I thought I would take advantage of my status as a Silm-struggler to offer suggestions and resources to people looking to extend their reading of the Legendarium.

In “Approaching “The Silmarillion” for the First Time” I made a handful of suggestions for readers intending to read this peculiar book for the first time. If you are a fellow Silm-struggler, I hope this helps you get a fuller experience of a beautiful collection of texts. That experience inspired me to write “A Call for a Silmarillion Talmud,” an unusual post for Tolkienists with more creative and technological skills to consider.

Finally, I had to write as a fan and as a scholar together in considering the cycle of Lúthien and Beren. In “Of Beren and Lúthien, Of Myth and the Worlds We Love” I talk about my love of the story and its links to the Legendarium while noting my hope for the 2017 release of the Beren and Lúthien materials and sharing some Silmarillion inspired artwork.

Film Reviews

When the teaser trailer of the third film, The Battle of Five Armies, was released, I wrote “Faint Hope for The Hobbit.” Although it is clear in the trailers that this is a war and intrigue film, I still had some hope I would enjoy it. The huge comment section shows in that post shows that not everyone agreed it was possible!

My review of An Unexpected Journey captures the tug back and forth I feel about the films. I called it, “Not All Adventures Begin Well,” and it is a much more positive review than many of the hardcore Tolkien fans or academics. And it gives this cool dwarf picture:

“What Have We Done?” These words are breathed in the dying moments of the second installation of The Hobbit adaptation, The Desolation of Smaug. In this review I think about what it means to do film adaptations. While I do not hate this Hobbit trilogy, I think that Peter Jackson just got lost a bit.

When I finally got to The Battle of 5 Armies, I decided it would be fun to do a Battle of 5 Blogs. 5 other bloggers joined it, making it a Battle of 6 Blogs! But the armies are pretty tough to count anyhow. I titled my blog, “The Hobbit as Living Text.” It was a controversial approach to the film, I know. Make sure you check out the other reviewers link here. Some of us chatted about the films in an All About Jack Podcast, which you can hear here and here.

While these aren’t substantial reviews, I featured two indie films: a documentary on Tolkien’s Great War, and a fictional biopic recreating Tolkien’s invention of Middle Earth called Tolkien’s Road—both inspired, perhaps, by John Garth’s work.

Book Reviews

There was no greater friend of The Hobbit in the early days than C.S. Lewis. In “The Unpayable Debt of Writing Friends,” I talk about how, if it wasn’t for Lewis, Tolkien may never have finished The Hobbit, and the entire Lord of the Rings legendarium would be in an Oxford archive somewhere. Lewis not only encouraged the book to completion, but reviewed The Hobbit a few times. Here is his review in The Times Literary Supplement.

Lewis is not the only significant reviewer of The Hobbit. When he was 8, my son Nicolas published his review, just as the first film was coming to the end of its run. When I was posting Nicolas’ review, I came across another young fellow–the son of Stanley Unwin, the first publisher to receive the remarkable manuscript of The Hobbit. Unsure how children would respond, he paid his son, Rayner, to write a response to the book. You can read about it here: “The Youngest Reviewers Get it Right, or The Hobbit in the Hands of Young Men.”

The Read-Aloud Hobbit

One of my first digital exchanges was participating in The Hobbit Read Along–you can still see the great collection of posts online. As I was doing this shared project, I was reading The Hobbit to my 7 3/4-year-old son. It was a great experience, but I made the mistake of doing accents to distinguish characters early on in the book. That’s fine when you’ve got oafish trolls or prim little hobbits. But a baker’s dozen of dwarfs stretched my abilities! You can read about my reading aloud adventures here.

In reading aloud I was really struck by the theme of providence in The Hobbit. I’m sure others have talked about it, but “Accidental Riddles in the Invisible Dark (Chapter 5)” is a great example of that hand of guidance behind the scenes.

Hobbit and Art

I am fascinated by Tolkien’s own artwork. In some of the Tolkien letters we find out how his humble drawings came to be published with the children’s tale. I decided, though, that I wanted to explore it a little more, and so I wrote, “Drawing the Hobbit.”

There have been many other illustrators since–including Peter Jackson, whose work as a whole is visually stunning, even for those who don’t feel he was true to the books. One of my favourites was captured in this reblog, “Russian Medievalist Tolkien“–a gorgeous collection of Sergey Yuhimov’s interpretation of The Hobbit.

With the great new editions of unpublished Tolkien by his son, we also get to see some of Tolkien’s original art. I continue to be fascinated by this dragon drawing. What an evocation of the Würme in medieval literature!

radagast-the-brownTolkien’s Worlds

I would like to spend more time thinking about the speculative universes of J.R.R Tolkien. Meanwhile, I would encourage you to read Jubilare’s reblog of the Khazâd series. It’s just the first of a great series, but shows you a bit of the depth of Tolkien’s world behind the world. In reading up on the Wizards of Middle Earth–the Brown, the White, the Grey, and the two Blues–it struck me how relevant Radagast the Brown is to us today. I take some time here to put a comment that Lewis made about Tolkien’s work in the context of other speculative writers, especially J.K. Rowling.

You can also check out the work of people like the Tolkienist, the links on the Tolkien Transactions to catch what kinds of conversations are about these days, or the academic work of people like David Russell Mosley. And, of course, we are all interested in Tolkien’s work on Beowulf. I read it last year for the free SignumU three-lecture class with Tom Shippey, which is now free on the SignumU youtube channel.

And Just For Fun….

Because I can, and because some things are entirely meaningless, I will leave you with a quiz: What Character in the Hobbit Are You? You will not be surprised that I am Thorin Oakenshield! The LOTR Project is a great online source for all kinds of Tolkien geekery, by the way. The LOTR Project has some great connections to Sparrow Alden’s “Words That You Were Saying” digital humanities project.

Oh, plus this. Or this!

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2017: My Year in Books: The Infographic

Posted on January 2, 2018 by Brenton Dickieson

The house elves at Goodreads have produced a little infographic to capture my year in book reading. I love data, and I love when clever people create clever algorithms to capture trends in visual form. I’ll post my full, super nerdy reading post in a few days, but just looking at the data highlights some trends for me.

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